Leopold Samsó

LEOPOLD SAMSÓ (Barcelona, 1946)
“Pau Riba.”
Black-and-white photograph.
Signed on the back.
Measurements: 27 x 36 cm; 51 x 41 cm (with frame).

This photograph by Leopold Samsó portrays Pau Riba in a remarkably natural domestic scene: submerged in a bathtub, reading, with a serene and slightly defiant attitude toward the camera. The image departs from the conventional portrait and creates a staged intimacy, where the subject appears stripped of artifice but fully aware of his own presence.

Samsó, known for his portraits of artists, writers, and cultural figures, was able to capture the creative atmosphere of the 1980s with a calm gaze. In this image, the whiteness of the space, the geometry of the bathtub, and the horizontal position of the body create a clean, almost theatrical composition, while the act of reading introduces an ironic and everyday touch.

The work is also notable for its connection to Pau Riba, a musician, poet, and key figure in Catalan counterculture. A free-spirited, iconoclastic, and transgressive figure, Riba embodies here a way of being in the world that combines intelligence, eccentricity, and critical distance.

Leopold Samsó is a Barcelona-based photographer born in 1946. Over the course of a career spanning more than fifty years, he has developed a body of work centered on portraiture, cultural reportage, and the observation of urban life. His archive brings together images of key figures in Catalan and Spanish culture, including Antoni Tàpies, Miquel Barceló, Joan Brossa, Ocaña, and Pau Riba. His work has been featured in exhibitions such as “So far, so close” at the Palau Solterra, which reviewed his contributions to portraiture and cultural reportage.